Quote:
Originally Posted by Demetric
if expansion happens, you only need to protect the players that would be on contract for the following year, correct? so the soonest this draft would happen is next June, so the players you would need to protect are the ones under contract for 17/18 season .... is this correct?
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This is unclear as well.
It seems like the some guys became UFAs after recent expansion drafts. Columbus picked Dallas Drake in the Expansion draft which was in June 2000 and then he signed with St.Louis on July 1, 2000. They also took Mathieu Scheinder and he signed LA that summer.
I suppose it would give the expansion team a shot to sign a free agent prior to the rest of the league could (similar to those UFA trades that sometimes happen - believe the Flames did this with Wideman and Bouwmeester).
If that's the case - the would make Wideman a much harder guy to trade. If the Flames had to protect him they'd pretty much have to go the eight skater route instead of losing one of their big 3.